I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
I've covered the hacker beat for Forbes since 2007, with frequent detours into digital miscellania like switches, servers, supercomputers, search, e-books, online censorship, robots, and China. My favorite stories are the ones where non-fiction resembles science fiction. My favorite sources usually have the word "research" in their titles.
Since I joined Forbes, this job has taken me from an autonomous car race in the California desert all the way to Beijing, where I wrote the first English-language cover story on the Chinese search billionaire Robin Li for Forbes Asia. Black hats, white hats, cyborgs, cyberspies, idiot savants and even CEOs are welcome to email me at agreenberg (at) forbes.com. My PGP public key can be found here.

An Interview With WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world’s secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago.Over the last year his information insurgency has dumped 76,000 secret Afghan war documents and another trove of 392,000 files from the Iraq war into the public domain–the largest classified military security breaches in history. Sunday, WikiLeaks made the first of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables public, offering an unprecedented view of how America’s top diplomats view enemies and friends alike.

But, as Assange explained to me earlier this month, the Pentagon and State Department leaks are just the start.

For our cover story on Assange and the coming age of leaks, click here.

In a rare, two-hour interview conducted in London on November 11, Assange said that he’s still sitting on a trove of secret documents, about half of which relate to the private sector. And WikiLeaks’ next target will be a major American bank. “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he said, adding: “For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails.”

Here is an edited transcript of that discussion:

Forbes: To start, is it true you’re sitting on trove of unpublished documents?

Julian Assange: Sure. That’s usually the case. As we’ve gotten more successful, there’s a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly.

You mean as your personal profile rises?

Yeah, the rising profile of the organization and my rising profile also. And there’s a network effect for anything to do with trust. Once something starts going around and being considered trustworthy in a particular arena, and you meet someone and they say “I heard this is trustworthy,” then all of a sudden it reconfirms your suspicion that the thing is trustworthy.

So that’s why brand is so important, just as it is with anything you have to trust.

And this gap between your publishing resources and your submissions is why the site’s submission function has been down since October?

We have too much.

Before you turned off submissions, how many leaks were you getting a day?

As I said, it was increasing exponentially. When we get lots of press, we can get a spike of hundreds or thousands. The quality is sometimes not as high. If the front page of the Pirate Bay links to us, as they have done on occasion, we can get a lot of submissions, but the quality is not as high.

How much of this trove of documents that you’re sitting on is related to the private sector?

About fifty percent.

You’ve been focused on the U.S. military mostly in the last year. Does that mean you have private sector-focused leaks in the works?

Yes. If you think about it, we have a publishing pipeline that’s increasing linearly, and an exponential number of leaks, so we’re in a position where we have to prioritize our resources so that the biggest impact stuff gets released first.

So do you have very high impact corporate stuff to release then?

Yes, but maybe not as high impact…I mean, it could take down a bank or two.

That sounds like high impact.

But not as big an impact as the history of a whole war. But it depends on how you measure these things.

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Julian Assagne is wanted in Sweden for rape. Apparently the case against him reopened mysteriously after it was initially dropped. The bottom line is don’t mess with the US because they will come to get you. His life is ruined for good and for what? For something that we all new but never had the proof? I don’t think any of the material Wikileak released is any revelation, the most it does is embarrass the US. Edan Aharony

so any thing and every thing is fair game, take company secrets and give to a competitor, copy righted material, private email , names of informants , inside sorces of information , the list of witness relocation people, locations of abused woman , some of those named may be killed so he is a theif at least and possibly a murder because of his actions

This use of sexual misconduct as a political baseball bat really speaks volumes about the psychology of the gullible easy to manipulate population as well as our masters. Scott Ritter, Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, and now Assange all attacked via sex scandals. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is being bullied into submission by a group of really nasty frat boys.

i wonder how much of the ups and downs of the stock exchange recently has been staged by the very wealthy in there goal to get rid of an open Obama. They have they wealth to see off short term gains by their contacts with a republican government. They have so much to loose through Obamas continued governance. Just look at health care. Donations by real people, not companies, should only be allowed, and those donations should be made completely open so everyone can see who is giving to whom and how much; on the internet.

Julian Assange: Part gossip columnist, part muckracker, and part opportunistic mercenary. Expect a series of books and maybe even movie rights.

I can see him making his profit off of the suffering of others, as many have done and more will do in the future, although I don’t condone it. What saddens me is the moral bankruptcy of those who celebrate this.

I think your comment is important. I’d like to think there’s a bigger reason for doing this. Perhaps, these communications could develop more active participation from the people in these countries with crooks running them. The US isn’t the only one with political criminality. No one wants to see their soldiers from their country die for some politician’s infidelity, or nosiness.

I would also say the morally bankrupt are those who get away with this daily, locally, nationally, and worldwide. Still you’re right, it’s sad and not worth celebrating. However, this could be a alternative to violent revolt and provide an easier removal of these crooks hijacking the system, and their taxpayers. Thanks for listening.

wow! how can anyone listen to julian assange, and come out thinking that he, in any way, is out to make money or profit off the sufferings of others. and when you talk about moral bankruptcy, i think you should look into your government! only those who lie & cheat & steal, while pretending to do something else, would not like julian assange. god bless julian assange. he is a true hero….

What saddens me is the moral bankruptcy of those whose outrageous behavior is exposed by Wikileaks and the lives ruined thereby. What saddens me also is the notion that exposing the truth is morally bankrupt.

Its only revenue stream is donations, but WikiLeaks is planning to add an auction model to sell early access to documents. http://stefanmey.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/leak-o-nomy-the-economy-of-wikileaks/

you people really have to get off the glenn beck coolaid, it’s damaging to the brain. Instead read. If you had a little self respect you wouldn’t allow this fraud at Fox News abuse your intelligence and you would look up the info for yourself.

How did Martin Luther King made any money? And why was he killed? (now wouldnt this be a more important question to be made?) How does anyone make any money in this fucked up world? Your question is kind of pointless… but I understand why you make it, I know you come from a place where only money driven people make sense to you… moral and truth are secondary, like everything else, because money is on top of everything rigth?

Anyway, do some research in the history for the past years, for starters, see that wikileaks has a founding enterprise in iceland. Also, I believe many people arround the world are supporting wikileaks either with money or effort. But dont believe what I say… go and do your homework.

i think that govt. like Chinese and Russians would we more then willing to pay huge amounts to julian to see america humiliated on the world stage and that is where he gets his funds from.but then even these goverments are not safe from this revolutionist.